


i. you are my sunshine

by peterstank



Series: his greatest creation [1]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Baby Peter, Peter Parker is Tony Stark's Biological Child, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-05-28 08:43:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19390567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterstank/pseuds/peterstank
Summary: Stark men don’t quit. Stark men brush off their knees as they get back up and fix their mistakes. Tony’s not stupid; he knows he’s made plenty of them. He has a ledger-full, a laundry list.But somehow, this doesn’t feel like one of them.or: the one where tony finds out he’s going to have a kid and he thinks maybe, just maybe, he could try giving the whole ‘dad’ thing a go.





	1. Chapter 1

‘ _Real isn't how you are made,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but really loves you, then you become Real.’_

_‘Does it hurt?’ asked the Rabbit._

_‘Sometimes,’ said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. ‘When you are Real you don't mind being hurt.’_

_‘Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,’ he asked, ‘or bit by bit?’_

_‘It doesn't happen all at once,’ said the Skin Horse. ‘You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.’_

* * *

I

* * *

“I need to talk to you.”

Tony jumps so hard he almost drops his screwdriver. Pepper is standing in the doorway of the workshop, clutching her ledger like it’s a lifeline and frowning in that _you’re in deep shit_ way he finds sort of cute—which is totally over the line and she’d probably quit if she knew, or worse, _she’d_ fire _him_.

“Do you, Ms Potts? Because it’s Saturday. I’ve explicitly stated I don’t like to be finagled on weekends.” 

“It’s Monday,” she says, rolling her eyes and walking over. “And I’m not here to finagle, I’m here because of something I… found. On Mr Stane’s desk.”

“On his desk,” Tony repeats. “In his office? His _private_ office? Ms Potts, were you snooping?”

“I _wasn’t_. I swear. I only went in there to grab a few forms I’d asked him to sign and then—it was right there, I couldn’t _not_ see it.”

“ _What_ was right there?”

Pepper presses her lips together uncertainly. She gives him a searching look, like she’s still trying to decide whether or not to share whatever it is she found with him. Then, reluctantly, she pulls a handwritten letter from her folder and hands it over. 

Tony takes it and skims, because if it really is Monday than his deadline is a lot closer than he thought, which means he needs to finish wiring the circuitry on the very dangerous explosive device that’s lying in dissembled pieces around him. 

Only, suddenly the missle doesn’t matter because his eyes catch the words _I got pregnant after that_ and _you’re the father_ and _I’m so sorry to drop this on you_ and _a letter feels so impersonal but I don’t have your private number_ and _from, Mary Fitzpatrick._

“Oh?”

“Yes. It’s very ‘ _oh_ ’.”

Tony clears his throat. “These things—I’ve gotten a few of them in the past. Odds are it’s just some woman looking for petty cash.”

“But it’s _not_ ,” Pepper insists. “I did some digging. Mary Fitzpatrick has a record that’s even more spotless than mine.”

“Impossible,” Tony scoffs.

Pepper shakes her head. “She’s a geneticist with Oscorp—so is her fiancé, by the way—and they each make six figures annually. She doesn’t _need_ money. She’s already won a few quiet awards in her field, so it’s not about the fame—and look, right here, see? It says that at the time, she and Richard were broken up, and there’s no possible way he could be the father given the date of conception.”

Tony lowers the letter, very slowly, because it’s even more volatile than anything in the workshop right now, more dangerous than any weapon he’s ever created. These things always are.

“If it were true, I would know.”

Pepper raises one immaculate, disbelieving eyebrow. “Would you? Do you even remember her?”

Tony tries to think. _Really_ , he does. Mary Fitzpatrick, geneticist. The letter says they’d met at a Christmas Gala in Manhattan, which he remembers. It had only been four months ago. He’d gotten drunk—ridiculously, over-the-top, blackout drunk. Obie had said he’d ended up dancing on a table and doing Jell-O shots off some model’s back, and in the morning…

A bad hangover, obviously. He thinks he remembers the impression of more. He’d woken up with his clothes strewn around the room and his bed rumpled but empty, aside from himself.

“I uh… no. I don’t.”

“Okay,” Pepper says slowly. “Okay, well, there are other ways of dealing with this.”

“Yeah.” Tony pinches his brow. “See, the thing is, this baby’s not even been born. I’m supposed to wait—what, five more months to figure out if this is true or not?” 

  
  
Pepper sighs, long and suffering, and honestly he can’t put it past her. It occurs to him that he’s sort of a mess. A tragic hot mess with daddy issues and a raging drinking problem. 

DUM-E whirs sympathetically, his clawed hand patting Tony’s shoulder. 

“I’m just saying, I don’t think you should dismiss it.”

“I’m not.”

“And I’m also not saying you should believe her.”

“Again: I’m not.”

“But I don’t see why a woman like her would lie about this. She and her fiancé... from what I can tell, they seem happy. She has a good, stable life. No history of drug abuse or mental illnesses, no criminal record. Can any of the other women who have come to you say the same?”

No, they really can’t. Most of them were diagnosed compulsive liars, bi-polar, shop-lifters, drug addicts—and one, even, a pyromaniac. Their claims had all come to nothing, and most dropped the act the minute Tony got in contact with his lawyers. 

Pepper gingerly takes the letter. “Should I talk to Mr Stane about this?”

Panic strikes him, hot and quick and strange. “No,” he says, too sharply. 

_Why?_ Why would it bother him so much?

(because he knows what Obie would say; dangerous words hidden behind an easy smile. _Don’t worry about this, Tony. No need to let it distract you. I’ll handle it._ )

Tony tries for a deep breath but his chest stays tight. “No, just… give me that. Let _me_ handle this. There’s a number?”

“On the back. And an address.”

“Great. Perfect. I uh—thanks, Ms Potts.”

“Of course, Mr Stark,” she says, but her brows are still scrunched together with worry. Tony puts his head in his hands and massages his temples to ward off the headache as she leaves, a flurry of clicking heels and jasmine shampoo.

DUM-E sets a mug on the table. It’s full of cold water and coffee grounds.

“You—you’re useless, you know that? I’m gonna donate you to Goodwill. No, worse, I’m gonna take you apart and sell your pieces to some high school engineering club—hey, get back here, don’t you run away from me! I’ll make you do a training course at Starbucks if you keep this up!”

From the corner, U beeps, and it sounds suspiciously like a snort.

* * *

Mary Fitzpatrick lives on the tenth floor of a homey looking New York apartment complex, smack dab in the middle of the Upper West Side.

It’s a picturesque sort of place, with clean white walls, intricate designs carved into the brickwork, flower boxes hanging outside of the windows. It doesn’t stink of suspect and it sure as hell doesn’t strike him as the sort of place a pyromaniac would live.

Tony takes the stairs. It’s stupid, because he’s already sweating enough, hands clammy and face hot. There’s ten flights to climb and he does it slowly, gripping the handle like it’s a lifeline and taking deep, strained breaths. He encounters no one during his long ascent.

The hallway is empty. Tony finds apartment 10-13 and stands in front of the door for maybe all of five minutes, trying to convince himself he’s not a complete wuss and he can _do this;_ trying to drown out the voice in his head with the jagged edges and heat of hate

( _you’re a complete dumbass. what are you trying to do? drag our family name through the mud by knocking up some harlet at a christmas party? are you insane, anthony? does the company mean nothing to you?!_ )

And then the door swings wide open.

Mary Fitzpatrick stands there in a spring coat with her keys in one hand and a flip phone in the other. Her eyes go wide when she sees him. The world stills, or perhaps it’s just his heart that does; plummeting into his stomach, into the depths of hell. 

“Mr Stark.”

“Ms Fitzpatrick.”

He clasps his hands to hide the way they’re shaking, because all he can see is the tiny, slight way her stomach swells beneath the thin sweater she’s wearing.  
  
  
  
There’s a baby in there, and it could be his. 

Or not. 

Time would tell.

“I—” Mary glances around in a sort of half-panic she’s clearly trying to stifle, like a deer in the headlights. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“No, of course not,” Tony says, and he feels like an idiot. “I didn’t call. That’s on me. Are you on your way out? I can come back later, or—”

“I was just…” she bites her lip and then steps fully into the hallway. “I was about to do some shopping.”

“Of course. Let me leave my number with you, and then—” 

“Come with me.”

And that’s when he remembers, like a lighting bolt to the chest, a shock of three-thousand volts that boils his blood and fries his brain; her magnetic quality, the way she came to her own conclusions, found her own solutions to things, convinced people to do things her way. He’d had his eyes on the Jell-O shot model until she’d come along, a tidal wave of moving hands and bright laughs and charm. 

Tony’s mouth is dry. He swallows. “Come… shopping with you?”

“If that’s sort of thing’s not beneath you,” she quips. He remembers that too; very quippy. “I was going to get pre-natal supplies. That’s the sort of thing you should be involved in, I think. Come?”

Tony barely considers it. He’s in New York alone, he hadn’t told anyone he was flying out, and he has nothing better to do but sit around his five-star hotel and drink (and mope, and wait for things to change). 

“Yeah, sure, why not.”

* * *

They take a taxi and pull up in front of some maternity store Tony doesn’t bother to catch the name of. Neither of them speak on the drive over. Tony spends the entire ride reading texts from Rhodey and Obadiah that start out as worried and grow progressively more irritated in tone. 

He doesn’t reply to any of them.

Tony keeps his head low and stands off to the side while Mary scans a range of pre-natal vitamins until she finds the kind she likes. She also grabs a pair of jeans, muttering that her waistband is too small now and she’s finally popped, and then they’re standing on the street in front of a coffee cart. 

Tony watches the steam curl off the surface of his drink. Mary swings her bag a little and shifts.

“Speak.”

“I didn’t learn that trick in obedience school,” Mary says dryly. They finally start to walk. “But you’re right, I have things to say.”

“So say them. I flew three-thousand miles on a whim, I need to know my reckless actions were valid. Also, aren’t pregnant women not allowed coffee?”

Mary makes a face. “We’re allowed coffee, but only in small amounts. This is decaf anyway. I like that you’re concerned, though.”

“I’m not concerned,” Tony deflects effortlessly. “Just curious. So the baby.”

“Fetus,” she corrects. “Sorry—I’ve been trying to distance myself emotionally, or whatever. I don’t…I don’t plan on keeping it.”

Tony stops. “What?” 

“Not like—well, I was going to get an abortion back when I first found out, but then Richard found out too, and he was _so_ happy. Like, I’d _never_ seen him that happy. And for like, all of two weeks I lied to his face and pretended it was his, and I guess I sort of changed my mind in that time and decided I wanted to keep it, but then he found out that it wasn’t his and… it sucked. He hasn’t spoken to me for two weeks—which, not that I can blame him, but god. I just got so fucking desperate, you know? So I wrote you that letter, because I thought: if I can’t get rid of it, and I don’t want it floating around in the foster system, what else can I do?”

Tony absorbs all of that with a frown. “He left?”

“Not like, _left_ , left. He just went to go stay with his brother in Queens for a bit. Said he needed to cool off. His sister in law says he seems to be coming around a little, though, which is good.”

“So I take it he doesn’t want any part of it?”

Mary nods. “He was very explicit about that. I thought he might change his mind, and I still do, because he’s just that sort of person… but I can’t make him do that. I can’t make him love someone that isn’t his.”

“Aren’t the two of you engaged?”

She raises her eyebrow. “Your point being...?”

“Well, you said we’d uh, conceived the kid when you two were on a break?”

“We were split,” she nods succinctly. “With Richard’s job... it wasn’t working out. We wanted different things. Anyway, both of us were pretty sure we were done for good, and then...”

“You patched up.”

She sighs, slightly wistful. “Yeah.” 

They’re standing in front of a flower shop. The air smells like roses and violets, sharp from leftover winter winds. Mary shivers. Tony doesn’t, probably because he’s too numb to feel anything at all. 

“So you’re asking…?”

“I’m asking if you’ll take the baby. Fetus. When it’s born. Yes.”

He’d already surmised as much, but it feels different hearing her say it; hearing the words tossed out so cavalierly, like they mean nothing at all. 

“I have a drinking problem,” is the first thing he can think to say. 

Mary nods. “I figured. Good thing you’ve got five months to get a hold on it, right?”

“I don’t…” he grapples. “I don’t think the court would find me fit to be a father.”

“You’re Tony Stark, a billionaire inventor. You can hire the best lawyers around. There’s no way you wouldn’t win a custody battle, and besides: with the way things are looking, no one is going to contest your claim anyways.”

He stares out onto the street, at the slow-moving line of yellow taxis and flashing lights, crimson, amber, emerald, smog clouding the sun, the world still moving and churning while his shatters around him like broken glass, and suddenly his reflection is no longer so skewed; the limelight can’t hide the shadows under his eyes from the lack of sleep, can’t hide the drinking or the drugs or the women, can’t hide _chew with your mouth closed Anthony; I expect As not Cs Anthony; you’re better than this Anthony; watch your mouth Anthony; I’ll give you something to cry about Anthony._

It’s not the mirror that’s broken, it’s him.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.”

Mary frowns. “So, what, you want me to give him away? Let him be raised by people who use him for a monthly stipend and toss him out when he gets too difficult?”

Tony is about to argue that really, that’s all dramatics, the whole system isn’t so bad, when his words wither away in this throat and he chokes on the falacy, because:

“Him?”

Mary’s face falls. “Fuck. Yeah, uh, it’s a boy. I didn’t mean to say that, sorry— _fuck_.”

Tony sits down. There are no chairs, so he simply drops down onto the side walk and crosses his legs. Whatever, it’s New York. There’s a banjo playing troubadour dressed as a Star Trek Gorn two hundred feet away from them. Tony Stark having a meltdown in front of a flower shop is the least of anyone’s concerns. 

_A boy. A boy. A boy._

Mary kneels in front of him. “You good?”

“Peachy, Fitzpatrick.”

“You sure? Because you look sort of pale.”

He _feels_ pale, and winded and grey and old. He feels terrified, but his heart is pumping to the beat of _a boy, a boy, a boy,_ and suddenly the echoes of his father are drowned out by this deeper sound, the one that reverberates into the depths of his soul, the one that wraps around his deep-fried electrocuted core and provides a strange sense of peace.

It’s like he’s been a compass with no electromagnetic field his entire life, spinning without direction, until now.

Mary places a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to drop all of this on you, really, or freak you out with the foster system stuff. If you really don’t want this, we can find a different way. I just… I’m not asking for money, here, or whatever. I just wanted to see what you thought about all this. Ask your advice, I guess. As his father, you have that right.”

As his father. 

Tony meets her eyes. They’re a serene sort of hazel. 

“My advice?”

“Yeah,” she nods. “And before you suggest the in-laws—listen, May and Ben are really sweet, but they barely have the money to look after themselves. I mean, they try, they get by, but adding a kid to the mix would totally fuck with their equilibrium and he’s not even blood family, so—”

“I’ll do it.”

“I—what?”

“I’ll do it,” he repeats. 

He, Tony Stark, the billionaire playboy in the middle of a crisis on the edge of a crowded city street, with the cold feeling in his veins that won’t abate because his blood hasn’t been warmed by whiskey in over twenty hours.   
  
  
He’ll do it. Because... because... 

“I want him.”


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

II

* * *

He goes cold turkey. 

It’s _the worst_ idea ever. 

Tony stays in New York for another three days after that. His arrival had conveniently coincided with a check-up appointment Mary had scheduled; the ultrasound technician had given him a double-take and then proceeded to slip back into the throes of professionalism, pointing to the scan. “See? There’s the head, just there.”

Tony doesn’t really see anything, just a vague blob of grey in a sea of more grey, but then—

“That’s the heartbeat.”

It’s quiet at first, until the technician moves her wand around to centre on the sound, and then it fills the whole room. “Strong and steady,” the technician reports with a quiet smile, one that matches Mary’s, like they’re both listening from far away while he’s _in it_ , surrounded by it, letting it rattle around in the hollows of his bones until he realises it’s beating in time with his own. 

Tony goes back to the hotel on the third day and finds a voicemail from Rhodey.

“Why won’t you answer your phone?! Man, I swear to god, if you don’t get back to Malibu by tomorrow I’ll ground you. Pepper says you’re in New York. _Why_ are you in New York? Obie’s totally flipping, man. Says the paps caught a picture of you and some woman on the street? By the way, mom called, says she misses you. I hate you, though. Bye.”

Tony saves the message.

He calls Rhodey back, but Rhodey doesn’t answer. “Hey, hypocrite. It’s me. Yeah, I’m in New York. No, I can’t tell you why. I need you to do a favour for me, though: go to my house and throw out all of the alcohol you can find. Empty the bar cart. Search my room, search my workshop. I’ve already programmed JARVIS to give you full access. There’s um… I think there’s a bottle in my bathroom. And one under my bed. And maybe in one of the drawers by my workbench? Just… get rid of it all. Please. Thanks.”

He hangs up. 

There’s a mini bar in the hotel room and the bottles seem to gleam and glisten, catching in the moonlight that streams through the parted curtains. 

Tony calls up an attendant to take it all away.

He calls the pilot of his private jet and instructs him to empty that mini bar, too. Leave nothing, ask no questions. 

Then he calls his lawyer and instructs him to send an NDA in the way of Dr. Elizabeth Conner, Seaward Practise in NYC. 

His heart still beats in tandem with a tiny grey blob’s, ten miles away.

* * *

Two days later and he finds Rhodey waiting for him in the middle of his living room.

He’s standing in uniform with his arms crossed, in full interrogation mode. The effects really should have worn off by now, but even after all these years they haven’t and Tony’s spine still goes rigid as his best friend stares him down.

“I did what you asked.”

Tony sets his bag down. He’s sweating through his suit. “Yeah? Good.”

“Now I want to know why.”

Tony flops down face-first into the couch. His entire body aches. He has a headache and it pounds at the sound of Rhodey’s voice. 

He wants to throw up. He wants a drink.

“Tony.”

“What?”

“Don’t ‘ _what_ ’ me,” Rhodey snaps. “You freaked everyone out disappearing like that. Even Pepper, who’s usually harder to spook than the security at Fort Knox. Tony, man, _talk to me._ ”

Rhodey puts his hand on Tony’s shoulder, a heavy and solid weight that jostles Tony too much. His head spins. 

“I got a woman pregnant.”

For a minute, everything is silent. Tony can only feel his cheek pressed into the leather, and Rhodey’s hand, heavy like the judgement he must be trying to choke back, and then—

“Oh, Tony.”

Abruptly he sits up, because the one thing he needs more than a fucking drink is that tone, all sympathetic and sorry, to stop. 

“Don’t give me that shit.”

“Excuse me?”

“I-I mean, it’s terrible, but it’s not… I’m keeping it. Taking it. Whatever.”

Rhodey stares. “You… Tony, you bought and lost a dog in the span of a week last year! You killed every pet fish you had as a child! You got so drunk one time you ripped our dorm room door off its hinges and used it to sled down the stairs, and you—you think you can raise a kid?!”

Tony swallows the bile that climbs, acrid, up his throat. He looks away. “I’m quitting.”

He pretends it doesn’t hurt, the way Rhodey sighs all, _yeah, we’ll see how long that lasts_. But that just makes Tony angry, under the whiplash of pain; the lack of faith only serves to fuel his fires.

Fuck that. Fuck Rhodey. Fuck drinking.

He can fucking quit.

“You can’t raise a kid,” Rhodey deadpans.

“Fuck you.”

“Tony.”

“ _Fuck. You._ ”

“Dude, don’t give me that. I’m looking out for you, not putting you down—”

“Then let me do what I need to do in peace and get the hell out of my house!”

Rhodey gapes, because Tony is on his feet now, sweating and trembling and cold, cold all over, cold to his very core because he can’t hear the heart beat anymore and there’s too much space, an infinite stretch of cosmic proportions, between him and…

And his son.

Tony starts crying.

It’s the cold. It’s the fact that he hasn’t had a drop in almost four whole days and he doesn’t think he’s gone so long without drinking since freshman year of college, and suddenly he just feels like that tiny kid in the too-big sweater, yelling at his stupid new roommate to leave him alone, he doesn’t want to go out, he doesn’t want to do anything—

( _“You don’t know anything about me, okay? I don’t need you judging me for trying to live a little and have fun, Rhodes! You’re not my father!”_

_“And thank god for that,” Rhodey snapped, and looked down at Tony with all of his eighteen year old wisdom. “Your dad is a douche.”_

_Tony had gaped, and then laughed, harder than he could ever remember laughing; no one had ever said anything like that before, not even Aunt Peggy. Tony had laughed until he was crying, and_ )

Just like then, Rhodey closes the space between them. He puts his hands on Tony’s shoulders and gently lowers him down onto the couch, rubbing his hand up and down Tony’s back, letting him bury his head against Rhodey’s stomach and cry because he’s sorry and alone and scared.

“Tony,” Rhodey says, after a little while. “If you… _god_ , I can’t believe I’m saying this, but—if you really want to do this, I’ll… I’ll help you.”

Tony wipes his eyes. He feels stupid, miserable, thirsty. “Promise.”

Rhodey’s laugh is indulgent and fond. “Yeah, I promise. Now come on, let’s get you to bed.”

“Wait,” Tony flails a little. “Do you wanna see a picture of Blob?”

“Of—what?”

Tony fumbles with his suit pockets and pulls out the picture. It’s been folded so many times there’s a crease down the middle, but the baby is still visible in the upper right corner. 

“See? That’s my little blueberry.”

Rhodey stares. In fact, he stares for so long it starts to become worrying. 

“Rhodey? Hello? Earth to Honeybear?”

“I’m sorry,” Rhodey blinks. Tony thinks there might be tears in his eyes. “That little smudge is your kid? That’s what you’re saying?”

Tony hums. “Yeah. Look, if you squint you can kinda see his nose.”

It’s not really true, but Rhodey eagerly follows his direction. Tony’s smile widens because for once, it doesn’t feel like the end of the world. It doesn’t feel like the sky is falling. 

It feels sort of okay. 

* * *

Two days go by. Rhodey hovers, bringing him ibuprofen and orange juice and combing over every nook and cranny for any hidden bottles of alcohol that might serve as catalysts for ‘slip-ups’.  
  
  
  
Tony spends the first twelve hours in bed sweating out his old self and then the rest of the time in his workshop, finishing his project with dulled motor skills, drowning out the screaming in his head to the sound of Led Zeppelin.

Pepper comes by the morning Rhodey leaves. He suspects the two of them have worked it out so he’s never really alone. She brings forms for him to sign and asks him, softly, how it went.

“As well as it could have gone,” he replies, slightly despondent and lacking the energy to keep up with their usual banter.

Pepper nods. She hands him another form, one that’s already been co-signed by Obie. Tony scrawls his name lazily. “I have a suspicion I could sign away my own company to you and not know it until it was too late.”

Pepper laughs. “How do you know you haven’t already?”

His smile is half-assed at best, a slight quirk of his lips, but it seems to calm her.

“Obie knows you went to see Ms Fitzpatrick.”

“I suspected,” Tony nods. “With the photos.”

Pepper nods. “I’ve taken care of that. As far as anyone knows, she’s a friend of a friend who passed away. No name was disclosed and it shouldn’t be a problem, since her face wasn’t actually captured in the images, just yours. Given the nature of your interaction, I don’t think you’ll get many questions about it.”

Tony nods. There’s a vague part of his nebulous mind that wonders, what about when the baby comes? What is he supposed to say? 

The answer comes, surprisingly firm: _nothing_.  
  
  
  
Tell no one.

It’s almost instinct, a reflex developed after years in the spotlight; a childhood of death threats and kidnapping attempts and bombs in his schools, of hiding his problems and glossing over his mistakes and hiding his eyes behind tinted shades.

But this isn’t a problem. It’s not a mistake.

“Mr Stark?”

“What? Sorry, I’m…” _a shitty boss_ , “tired. Was there anything else?”

Pepper hesitates. “No. No, that’s all. Thank you, Mr Stark.”

It’s not all, but he doesn’t have the energy to ask. He simply turns back to his work, twisting circuitry wires with a pair of pliers, and waits for the sound of her heels to recede into nothing.

The music turns back up.

* * *

A month goes by and he hasn’t had a drink, and then Obie comes to see him.

He’s carrying a bottle of scotch.

“Tony!”

He’s all bright smiles in a fine-pressed suit, that twinkle in his eye bright and catching on the artificial light in Tony’s kitchen. He’s preparing a smoothie, because DUM-E had tried to do it and splattered the walls in green goo. He’d then whizzed around in circles, beep-screaming and pissing motor oil as he tried to evade being grabbed by Tony. 

Tony turns the blender off when he sees the scotch.

“It’s been a little bit, huh?” Obie asks, oblivious as ever, setting the bottle down on the counter and loosening his tie. “Heard about the New York skirmish, but don’t worry, I sorted the whole thing out—”

“I’m sorry, _what?_ ”

“Yeah, well, you know, these things happen. It’s unfortunate.” He shakes his head sadly. “You know, she was very understanding over the phone. Took it well. Didn’t ask for money or anything. I think she was just confused.”

Just confused. 

Tony can’t find words. He isn’t sure exactly what Obie means. It’s been two weeks since he’s heard from Mary and yeah, it had begun to concern him, and he’d been planning to call her, but that thought fades until it’s just a dull throb in the back of his mind.

Because Obie is opening the bottle and pouring out two servings.

“Anyway, I thought I’d stop by and congratulate you for finishing up on the T-500. Everyone loved it. Shame you weren’t there to see them flip out over it, god. I don’t think I’ve laughed harder in a long time. Drink?”

Tony stares. His mouth is dry.

He drinks.

* * *

For a little while his lungs are on fire. He’s warm, warm, warm; an inferno in his chest, red hot coals in his stomach, flames licking through his body and boiling his blood.

Then Obie leaves with a bright laugh and a pat on the shoulder, and Tony is stranded with the rest of the bottle.

So he drinks it. All of it. Or, most of it, but it _feels_ like all of it.

Rhodey finds him the next morning, groaning and still a little drunk, curled up on his bathroom floor.

He doesn’t say anything, just gingerly helps Tony sit up. He takes away the bottle and—yeah, there’s a little left, so hopefully he won’t fucking die of alcohol poisoning. 

Rhodey dumps what remains into the sink and throws it away. Out of sight, out of mind, like it was never there at all.

Only it’s still burning through Tony’s bloodstream.

“Rhodey—”

“Was it Obie?”

He nods, feeling like a little kid tattling on the playground, but Rhodey just shakes his head. “I told him you were quitting,” he mutters. “I guess he just forgot.”

“Yeah well, old habits and whatever,” Tony mutters bitterly. 

* * *

He throws up at least three times and then curls up in the empty bathtub with a glass of cold water and a rag on his forehead. Rhodey and Pepper hover around in his peripherals, offering him medicine and more water and things to eat. 

It should be helpful, but it’s not. It makes him feel small and idiotic and shitty. It makes him angry, because he has four months to get sober now instead of five and all the progress he’d made has been thrown out the window.

He’d fucked up.

Next thing he knows the glass is flying out of his hand to shatter against the far wall. He feels his chest collapse like a concave vortex, a vacuum where the bad things always go. 

“Tony.”

Rhodey puts his hand on Tony’s shoulder. He squeezes, not too tight. 

“I can’t do this.”

Rhodey shakes his head. “Don’t say that. You were doing so good, man. You _can_ do this, I know it.”

Tony shakes his head. “I can’t. I _can’t_. I can’t be—”

“You _can_.”

But he can’t, not only because he’s a fucking failure, but because Obie fucked everything up with Mary. It all surges back to him at once, like an ocean wave that leaves him drenched in fear and soaked in horror. 

“Give me your phone.”

“What?”

“Just give it,” Tony snaps, and doesn’t even wait for Rhodey to hand it over. He starts fishing through his stupefied friend’s pockets.

“Tony, man—”

“Mr Stark, I wouldn’t advise—”

Tony punches in the number. He gets the dial tone. Then the answering machine. “ _Hi, this is Mary Fitzpatrick, I’m afraid I can’t come to the phone right now. Please leave a message. Thank you._ ”

Tony can’t do that, because he doesn’t know if she and Richard have patched things up yet and the last thing they need right now is Tony butting in. So he calls again.

“Hello?”

“Mary.”

There’s a scuffing sound, and a sigh. “What do you want?”

“Pardon?”

“Your friend already told me. You changed your mind. Whatever. I get it.”

Tony pinches his brow, feeling like he’s about to keel over. “No, I—there was a misunderstanding. I never changed my mind.”

“What?”

“I never… he called and tried to pay you off, didn’t he?”

“Yeah. Offered two-hundred thousand dollars and all I got out of it was a headache, because obviously I didn’t take the money. I told you that’s not what I wanted from this.”

“Which I understand,” Tony said, now curled up with his head between his knees. “He didn’t have my consent to do that and I sure as hell didn’t ask him to. I _never_ would have asked him to. I didn’t change my mind, Mary.”

He didn’t. He hasn’t. He _can’t_. 

He can’t be a failure.

“Oh.” Mary clears her throat. “Well that’s good, because I was really starting to freak out about what I was gonna do. Limited options and all that and— _ow!_ ”

“What? What happened? Mary?”

“I—he kicked.”

“He what?”

“He _kicked_.” There’s the sound of a bright, clear laugh. “Just now. I hadn’t… he hadn’t done it yet and I was _seriously_ starting to freak out, because all the books say it’s supposed to happen at like, sixteen weeks, but I’m at twenty and it hadn’t… _god_. That feels weird.”

Tony blinked. “He kicked.”

“Yeah. Shit, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be—”

“No.” Tony surprises himself with the firmness in his own voice. “Don’t apologise. I... I want to know about that stuff.”

Mary falls silent. Tony closes his eyes and rests his forehead on his knee. “Listen, I’m um… I’m doing what I need to do here. Sorting things out. I have a handle on it.” 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Just… yeah. Let me know, you know, that he’s okay. Keep me updated or in the loop or whatever.”

“There’s no loop, it’s just me and you,” Mary says heavily. “Richard’s decided to stay with his brother until I have the baby. We went out on a date Saturday, though, and he seemed… fine. Uncomfortable, but fine.”

Tony nods, even though she can’t see him. His throat burns and his mouth tastes sour. “Take care.”

“Yeah, you too.”

The line goes dead. Tony vomits in the bathtub. 

* * *

Rhodey’s there when he wakes up two hours later, reclined on the empty side of the bed reading a parenting book Tony had been skimming. 

“So, you’re having a son.”

For the first time in hours, he doesn’t feel sick. 

* * *

Three months later and he’s sprawled in the floor of the room that, bar any further complications, will become a nursery. 

It sounds entirely too domestic, but that doesn’t stop Tony from painting the walls a bright yellow and filling the room to the brim with stuffed animals, because all the books say babies like to look at things even if they can’t play with them. 

He’s aware that he’s viewing all of this through a lense, taking steps objectively, following a logical order like he’s conducting a science experiment rather than emotionally preparing to raise a whole-ass fucking baby. 

There’s a list on his fridge that Pepper wrote and he’s been slowly crossing things off in his spare time. Baby proofing the house; buying a car seat; and now, assembling a crib. 

“What is this?” Tony holds up the metal…thing that had come with the parts. “This isn’t a tool. This is a doohickey. A thingamajig.”

“Cool your jets, Ariel,” Rhodey grouses. He’s organising the parts into groups. “You’re a mechanical engineer, you can do this with your eyes closed.”

It’s true, but it doesn’t stop him from blinking down in wonder at the hoozamawhatsit before tossing it aside in favour of an actual screwdriver. He’s assembled most of the the bottom half of the crib when his phone starts to ring.

“You’ve got Stark.”

He hadn’t even looked at the caller ID before answering, and it makes him freeze when an unfamiliar voice, sounding tinny and distressed, flows through the speakers. “Tony Stark?”

“The one and only,” he says, slow and suspicious.

“Good, thank god. This is May Parker, I, uh, I’m calling to inform you that Mary’s gone into labour.” 

“I’m—excuse me?!”

“She’s having the baby.”

“No, no, I’m sorry, there’s gotta be some kind of mistake. This is simply just not enough time to have grown a whole human being. Have you suggested she hold it in? I was thinking maybe another five or so years, but _at least_ I think we should stick with the recommended nine months instead of _eight_.”

May Parker lets out a startled laugh. “It happens sometimes. You’ll need the address for the hospital?”

Tony chokes out an affirmative and writes, in shaking scrawl, the information she passes along. The hospital, the room number, ask for Mary or May. 

Then she hangs up.

Rhodey is already holding his keys. “Go time?”

All Tony can do is nod.

* * *

A month. 

A _month_ too early.

He doesn’t even have the fucking crib assembled yet. 

Tony has his head between his knees for the entirety of the flight. There’s no one to calm or comfort him; Rhodey had been pulled away at the last second for some emergency conference he couldn’t get out of and, with profuse apologies, he’d sent Tony on his way with the promise of a phone call and a late flight out. Pepper hadn’t been able to come either, pulled into meetings by Obie.

He’s completely alone.

It’s in a daze that he gets to the hospital, taking the car that had been waiting for him on the tarmac.

His hands are shaking but he keeps calm, keeps his breaths from getting too shallow, hides behind his sunglasses and brushes the lint off of his shirt sleeves. He’s not wearing anything remarkable, just an oil-stained band shirt and dark jeans, but people stare anyway.

NDAs. He needs to call his lawyer. 

“Can I help you?”

“Uh—I’m here for Mary Fitzpatrick?”

It’s not even technically true. He’s here to pick up a baby, not to hold Mary’s hand while she pushes it out; it’s like grabbing take out or dry cleaning or—

“Room 311. That’s the third floor. Take the elevator, then it’s down the hall and to the right.”

He doesn’t even think. His mind is white noise. Tony rests his forehead against the metallic wall of the elevator as it rises, exacerbating the swooping feeling he’s been fighting since the phone call, like someone ripped the floor out from beneath his feet. 

He doesn’t even have the crib ready. 

There’s a woman waiting outside room 311, sipping from a water bottle and looking horribly run down.

Tony approaches, weightless, slowly rising out of his own body the closer he gets to the room; inside there’s screaming and calls of encouragement. It doesn’t sound as dramatic as the movies make it out to be, but his chest still clenches and a wave of nausea spurns his fists to curl. 

“Tony Stark.”

It’s the woman who speaks first. She’s May, he ascertains by the voice.

“That’s me.”

Her expression contorts a little into something like distrust and she squints at him behind wire-rimmed glasses, but then it all fades away just as quickly. “Well, you’re here, so I suppose I’ve gotta give you an inch. Come on.”

Just like that she’s tugging him inside.

It’s sort of a nightmare, what lies behind that door. Tony thinks his mind filters out the worst of it, but there are still vague impressions seared into the back of his mind that fill him with an ever-lasting horror.

May works at a hospital apparently, and coaxes Mary through the pain in a familiar, friendly way, joking with her and holding her hand. 

Tony just stands, feeling out of place, like a piece for the wrong puzzle that almost fits but can’t quite connect. 

That is, until May nudges him. “Hold her hand.”

Tony thinks he might throw up if he speaks, so he takes Mary’s warm hand without arguing. She doesn’t even seem to notice. 

“Would you call Richard? I know he said it would be too hard for him, but I just… I just need to see him. _Please_ , May.”

May kisses her forehead. “I already did. He’s coming, sweetie.”

Mary relaxes against the pillows for all of five seconds. Then she curls into herself with the next contraction.

“God, Stark,” May jives from over Mary’s head, “you look like you’re close to passing out.”

“That’s probably because I am.”

May shakes her head with the same brand of exasperated fondness as Pepper. “It’ll be okay. Doctors get preemies in here all the time, they know how to take care of them.”

(but i don’t)

The thing is, it wasn’t the baby they should have been worried about, in the end.

It sort of happens all at once. 

One minute, Tony is holding Mary’s hand and listening to May coax her through breathing exercises, while the doctor urges her on, _just one more push_ —

The next, the room is filled with the sound of crying. 

It’s like the heartbeat. It comes from _everywhere_. It comes from inside Tony. He can hear it in his bones. He’ll never forget the sound. 

It’s not loud, just tiny mewling noises. The nurses rush forward with clean towels to wipe away the blood, they swaddle him, and then—

“Would you like to hold him?”

Vaguely, he registers the doctor talking to Mary about delivering the placenta next, but Tony tunes it out because there’s a blonde nurse standing in front of him, offering up a swaddled baby, _his_ baby, and all Tony can do is nod.

“Remember to support his head—yeah, like that. See, you got it! You’re a natural.”

Tony doesn’t hear any of it but his ears aren’t ringing anymore, either. It’s just him and the weight in his arms, wriggling and squirming a little, cheeks flushed with red. 

He’s _tiny_.

Tony’s never been fond of babies. He can’t stand the crying, the snot, the mess. But suddenly it doesn’t matter, suddenly he can’t care about anything less, because he’s never seen anyone so perfect in his whole life.

He was aware of love, on some level. Aware that it came in different shapes and sizes. His love for his mother had been transparent and obvious, bursts of light in an abyss of darkness. It was simple and easy and then, like a switch being flicked, it was gone. 

With Rhodey, it’s strange. Reluctant, hot like fire, red with rage. It’s a game of tug of war, and neither of them are willing to lose, so they give and take and yell and, when he’s on his knees shattering into a thousand pieces, Rhodey is there to drop the rope and pick him up. 

But this love is different. It’s inside him and all around him, it eclipses anything else; warms him like a rising sun and washes away the bad like a sea breeze.

There isn’t _anything_ he wouldn’t do, there’s _nothing_ that means more. It’s instant, automatic; it barrels into him like a semi, so overwhelming he has to sit down in the rickety hospital chair by Mary’s bed. 

“Hi,” Tony whispers. 

He’s staring at the sun and somehow, he hasn’t gone blind. 

The baby, his baby, makes a soft little whining sound. His eyes flutter open and, _fuck_. Tony would sit down again if he could. 

Because they’re so big, and brown, and wide; locked right onto his, the same shade as Tony’s. He doesn’t need a paternity test to know, and he won’t ask for one. 

The proof is staring right at him. Brown eyes and tiny mewling noises. His _son_. 

“ _Tony!_ ”

May’s shout pulls him back to reality, where nurses and doctors are rushing around the room and Mary is, with painful suddenness, lying limp on her bed. She’s as white as she sweat-soaked sheets she’s lying on.

“Tony,” May says again, quieter this time, “they have to get the baby to the NICU, okay? Give him to Rosie.”

Rosie is the blonde nurse, who hasn’t left his side but isn’t looking at him anymore. She’s watching while Mary struggles to breathe and the doctors struggle to save her, yelling something about hemmoraging and preparing an OR.

“Rosie.” 

May’s sharp tone makes Rosie jump. She nods, takes a deep breath, and holds out her arms.

Tony can’t… 

He can’t let go.

“He’ll be okay,” Rosie whispers, just for them. “You can… you should come with.”

* * *

Rosie puts the baby in an incubator and wheels it down hallways, Tony trailing along beside her with one hand resting on top of the glass. 

The NICU is quiet and dark. The room is full of the sounds of beeping monitors and machines. There are six other occupied incubators, with babies of varying sizes. 

Rosie hooks up all of the equipment. Soon his baby’s heartbeat is added to all the rest, but Tony doesn’t need the monitor to hear it; it echoes in his bones. He’d know if it stopped.

“You can stay with him,” Rosie whispers. “I’ll be right over there. We’ll know if anything happens. Suze will be along in a minute to brief you, okay?”

Tony can only nod. 

* * *

At one in the morning, May Parker wanders into the NICU. 

Her hands are empty. She looks dazed, like there’s nothing to keep her from floating off. Tony can no longer reconcile with the feeling, because the anchor he needed has currently wrapped his tiny little hand around Tony’s finger and held on. 

He’s so strong.

He’s been sitting with his head resting against the glass for at least an hour, watching his baby’s little chest rise and fall. Suze had come over and put an oxygen mask over his face, and it scares Tony.

There are so many wires. His breaths are so feeble. Tony can’t remember ever feeling so _terrified_. 

May sits down next to him. 

“Mary died.”

It’s finally enough to get Tony to look away. He takes in May’s shadowed face, pallour and rings around her eyes and pursed lips. “ _Fuck_.”

May nods. Her chin wavers and unbidden, a tear falls down her cheek, one she wipes away angrily. “It… there was a complication. It happens sometimes. Pre-eclampsia.”

Tony swallows. “Richard?”

May covers her mouth. “He got here five minutes after she died.”

Tony can’t think of anything to say. He’s just sorry. 

May seems to pick up on that better than even Tony’s friends might have. She sits with him in silence and watches the baby breathe. Slow, ragged, painful grasps at oxygen. Each one pulls Tony a little closer, squeezes his heart a little more.

“Will you look after him?”

The question startles Tony a little. May is staring at him, eyes red-rimmed and puffy from silently weeping. “What?”

“The baby. You’ll take good care of him, right?”

Tony can’t imagine doing anything else. “Of course.”

May nods, like she’s grappling to accept it. “I should go be with my family,” she whispers, “but Mary... Mary was my family, too. If it’s alright—could you let us... could you keep us updated?”

Tony pauses. “Yes,” he whispers, “but it’s more complicated than that. I don’t exactly plan on telling the public about him. No one knows about Mary, either. I’d appreciate it if you...”

He can’t quite find the words, but May nods anyway. “Of course.”

She rises slowly, keeping her eyes on the baby. He’s Tony’s first chance at so many things, his second chance at life. For Richard, he imagines loathing. For Tony, maybe even for the baby; the two things that took the love of his life away, snuffed out her last breath.

For May, he doesn’t know. 

Halfway across the room she stops and turns. “Tony.”

Tony looks up. “Yeah?”

“Just... she wanted... she liked Peter. For a name,” May whispers. “In case you hadn’t thought of one yet.”

He hadn’t. Tony had flipped through endless name books, laughing over the worst ones with Rhodey and jokingly throwing out awful suggestions at Pepper, like ‘Axel’ and ‘Norman’ and ‘Eugene’—to all of which she had responded with a flat, ‘No.’ 

Tony tosses the name around now. “Peter,” he repeats, and the little hand around his finger tightens just a bit. “You like it? Yeah, me too. I think it suits you.”

Peter doesn’t react. Tony, in turn, doesn’t mind. He strokes Peter’s belly and smiles, for the first or maybe the thousandth time. 

When he looks up, May is gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know nothing about medicine or having babies pls don’t come at me!!!! anyway, uh, here’s this :) thank u for reading!! lmk ur thoughts


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

III

* * *

  
It’s five in the morning when Peter starts to grunt in his sleep.

He’s been hooked up to a breathing machine since about ten minutes after he was born, the clear tubing wrapped around his tiny head, his chest rising and collapsing with all of his strained breaths.

Sometimes there are gaps as long as seven seconds between each one.

The nurses had assured Tony it was normal. He’s a preemie, his lungs aren’t as developed as normal babies. He’s just figuring out how to breathe, trying to find a rhythm.

But it progressively gets worse as the hours pass.

Tony doesn’t sleep. He sits by the incubator and watches his baby, clutching a cardboard cup of shitty coffee and trying not to blink in case he misses anything.

Peter doesn’t really react to his presence, which Tony was expecting. All of the books he’d read said that babies had a hard time focusing on anything for the first few months. He has no idea what the world is like for preemies; how much he sees and hears, whether it scares him or not.

It scares Tony, what he sees: the wires that coil around Peter’s little body, grey and red and black against the soft blue blanket; the strain of his breathing; the occasional skip on his heart monitor that never fails to drain all the blood from Tony’s body as the world ends in-between the beats.

It’s been a long day and even with the coffee Tony starts to crash. His eyes sting. He hadn’t slept the night before, he realises—because he hadn’t been expecting this, because he hadn’t been _ready._

He still isn’t. He doesn’t know how to deal with the underdeveloped baby in front of him that can’t even cry the way other newborns do: ear-piercingly, annoyingly—the kind Tony would give anything to hear. Instead, Peter whines, a small and terrified sound, moving his head in either direction like he’s looking for someone.

Tony wonders if it’s Mary he’s searching for; if there’s some part of him that knows someone is missing.

Tony does what little he can, reaching into the glass house where his porcelain child is being kept, so he can grow, and running his knuckles lightly down Peter’s warm tummy.

Peter always soothes a little at the touches, blinking, eyelashes damp from tear-stained cheeks, his chest rattling from the strain of crying.

“Hey,” Tony whispers, when it happens the third time. “Hey, it’s me. I’ve got you.”

He knows Peter doesn’t understand, but it still helps him, somehow. It helps them both, he thinks.

Only, then Tony falls asleep.

He promises himself: he’ll only close his eyes for a second, just to rest a bit.

The next thing he knows, the machinery around Peter is going haywire and his baby is grunting, his chest caving in with every exhale, his skin a sickly shade of blue.

“Nurse!”

Suze is on the night shift and she’d been eyeing him from the station in the back of the NICU with something like suspicion, but now she just runs over, donning her stethoscope to listen as Peter _chokes,_ writhing in his fucking _cage._

“Page Owens!” Suze calls. She’s trying to be calm, but Tony can hear the urgency in her voice.

“What—what’s happening?!”

He hates the way he sounds, like a scared little kid. He can’t be scared, he needs to be strong. Stark men don’t break. Stark men don’t wear their hearts on their sleeves, and they certainly don’t stand by and watch them die.

Suze is fiddling with the machinery. From what Tony can figure, she’s decreasing the oxygen being fed to Peter through the ventilator.

“I think he’s experiencing what’s called pneumothorax,” Suze tells him, “but I can’t be sure without getting a chest x-ray.”

Rosie runs over. “Owens is on his way.”

Suze nods shortly. She’s shining her light down on Peter’s chest, and Tony doesn’t know why, but he’s not about to question it. “You’ll need to sign some consent forms,” Rosie tells him. “And with babies his size, when they’re so dependent on the ventilator, it’s dangerous to use the normal treatment methods for pneumothorax. He might need a chest tube.”

Tony blinks. Her words don’t quite register. All he can hear is Peter, struggling and crying silent tears. He’s looking around again, but when his eyes land on Tony, he stops and stares.

_I’m here. I’ve got you._

* * *

Owens arrives not three minutes later and together, they take Peter down to get x-rayed. Suze tells Tony to stay in the NICU waiting area and when he argues, she gives him a look that could probably kill a man and reminds him they’re trained professionals, and he’d only be in the way.

So that’s how Tony ends up on the floor of a hospital hallway, around the corner of the waiting room, staring at the polished white floors with his head between his knees.

It’s how Pepper finds him.

She appears from seemingly nowhere, a ghost from a time he can’t quite reconcile himself with; it seems like his life has been fragmented, before Peter and after. He doesn’t know who he was yesterday, but she’s just the same: a whiff of gentle jasmine, a spectre wreathed in gold, a phantom that slowly lowers to the floor and gingerly tucks her legs to the side.

He wonders if she’s even real, or if his heart is just playing tricks on him, showing him what he wants to see.

“Mr Stark.”

Tony glances over. He notices that, despite not having a hair out of place, her mascara is smudged like she might have been crying.

“I heard about what happened to Mary Parker.”

Of course she had. It would have been the first thing on her list; marching into the hospital with custody forms and confidentiality agreements for Mary to sign, only to find an empty bed.

“I’m so sorry.”

He doesn’t know if she’s apologising to him, or simply for the occurrence of such a shitty thing, or even for the fact that Peter’s birth will always be eclipsed by his mother’s death.

( _If he even lives to wonder about her,_ whispers a voice somewhere in the black abyss of his mind, dripping with venom. He pushes it away because he _can’t,_ he can’t think like that.)

Pepper is staring at him, because she hasn’t lived through the same apocalypse he has, and because he hasn’t spoken a word since she’d arrived.

“The nurses said you’d be in the NICU,” Pepper whispers. “Did something… else happen?”

(Did someone else die?)

Tony swallows. “I don’t know yet.”

Pepper studies him a moment longer and seems to, eventually, accept it at face value. She doesn’t pry any further, but simply leans back against the wall.

Pepper Potts, sitting on the dirty hospital floor in a thousand dollar skirt. It’s almost enough to make him smile.

But he doesn’t.

“Wait with me?”

Pepper nods and silently holds out her hand. Tony takes it.

* * *

Dr. Owens calls Tony’s name and jerks him right out of the hopeless oblivion he’d stranded himself within.

He and Pepper rise. The doctor meets them halfway between the waiting area and the hall. He looks half dead on his feet, caffeine in his veins rather than blood, twitching with a jittery energy that contrasts the grim line his mouth is set into.

“You’re Tony Stark?”

Tony nods, not even bothering with a sarcastic quip, because he’s pretty sure Owens is just following standard hospital policy and really, he couldn’t give less of a fuck who knows his name right now.

Owens nods. He takes a short, deep breath. “Peter’s right lung collapsed,” he informs them. “Now, I know how scary that sounds, but given his criteria it’s not a huge surprise. He developed RDS overnight, which happens when the lungs fail to produce enough surfactant—that’s the stuff that helps our lungs accept oxygen and keeps the sacs from deflating.

“This deficiency caused a strain on his lungs, and he developed a tear in the tissue—one we’ve since resolved, it was very, very small, easily caught and fixed. That’s what caused the pneumothorax, though. The air built up around his lungs instead of filling them, which caused his chest cavity to bloat with pressure. We went in and patched him up, inserted a chest tube, and we have him on medication. Do you have any questions for me?”

Tony says the first and only thing he thinks: “Can I see him?”

Owens nods. “Of course. We’re just waiting for him to stabilise before we move him—preemies can be very touchy—and then we’ll return him to the NICU.”

Tony nods. “How-how long? Will he need to stay, I mean?”

“He was born five weeks early,” Owens said, “but from his records he seemed to be in the smaller percentile for babies. With the complications, I would give it another month. Newborns are very resilient. They have a much easier time bouncing back from things like this.”

Tony tries to breathe. His arm is aching. “I—thank you.”

Owens smiles. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll let you know when he’s been brought back up.”

He nods to Pepper and then retreats to the nurse’s station. Tony, shaking, sinks into the closest chair. The waiting room is empty aside from him and Pepper. Outside it’s still dark, the clouds heavy and almost black.

Pepper settles beside him. “It’ll be okay,” she whispers.

Tony hopes she’s right.

_It’ll be okay. I’m here._

* * *

Peter is fast asleep when Tony enters the NICU. He’s covered in more wires, more tubing, a clunkier ventilator taped to his face.

He’s too small, too vulnerable. The world will tear him apart—if he doesn’t tear himself apart first.

Tony sits, reaches into the incubator, and strokes Peter’s stomach. All he wants is to hold him, and it hurts like hell that he can’t.

“You’ll be okay,” he whispers. “ _Please_ be strong for me? You’re so strong. I’m here, okay? I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be strong for you, too.”

* * *

Pepper is in and out. She spends a lot of her time fielding calls for him, pacing the floor with a never-empty cup of coffee, warding off Obie, trying to get in touch with Rhodey—apparently he’s on some emergency mission, as if Tony doesn’t have enough to agonise over.

He tries to push it out of his mind for now, even as it presses insistently against the borders of his psyche, threatening to eat away at him like a plague.

Rhodey wouldn’t want him to worry and so he siphons all of his energy onto Peter, watching him like a hawk. He counts the seconds between his breaths, fills the gaps in his heartbeat with his own, and occasionally mutters encouraging nonsense to him, just to kill the silence Pepper leaves in her wake.

Rosie and Suze leave, abandoning him with strangers. The new nurses mostly keep to themselves in the back, but they come out periodically to keep a careful eye on the monitors and babies.

Pepper returns with coffee. “You know, you should really shower. Get some rest. I can keep an eye on him.”

“No.”

“Mr Stark—”

“No.”

“You’re gonna have to at some point, honey,” says a new voice—one of the day shift nurses, a woman named Catherine. She squints at Peter’s displays. “You’re no use to him when you’re like that.”

“Like what? I’m fine!”

“You stink, baby,” she says distractedly. “Go shower. We’ll call you if anything happens.”

Tony frowns. He _can’t._ What if something happens? What if Peter’s lung collapses again? What if—

“Stop that,” Catherine orders. “I know that look. You’re gonna worry yourself into a hole. He’s _fine._ Look—his vitals are stable, he’s breathing just fine with the tube.”

Tony bites his tongue. “I don’t even have a place to stay.”

“I booked you a room at St. Regis,” Pepper interrupts idly. “There’s fresh clothing waiting there for you as well as toiletries. You have no excuses.”

“Except my son.”

Pepper smiles. “Peter will be _fine.”_

She likes the name. She’d told him so, when they’d been waiting for Peter to be brought back up. She’d said it was a lovely name, the sort good kids had, and Tony had just nodded because he couldn’t hear anything but the ringing in his ears and that shapeless echo, ever-present, strong and steady.

Now, he privately agrees. He likes the way it sounds, floating in the air, suspended and sweet. _Peter_.

“What if—”

“ _Mr Stark.”_

Tony glares. “You forget, Ms Potts, that you’re employed by _me._ I make the calls around here, not you.”

Pepper raises her eyebrows. “Is that the way this works? I wasn’t aware.”

Catherine lets out a sudden snort.

Tony blinks. “I’m sorry, was there something else you needed?”

Catherine doesn’t seem to mind his impatience. She’s probably used to snappy parents. “You two are more dramatic than my Sunday soaps, and that’s saying something,” she says. “Now _skedaddle._ You’re stinking up my NICU.”

Tony scowls. His eyes settle back on Peter, who hasn’t moved at all. His eyes are still peacefully closed.

“You have my number?”

“I—who do you think you’re talking to? Of _course_ I have your number.”

“And you’ll call me if anything happens?”

_“Yes.”_

“Really? Because when I say anything, I don’t just mean life and death scenarios. I mean, like, if he blinks, or poops, or twitches. I want constant updates—”

She has to push him out of the NICU.

* * *

He feels like a cheap shit, standing under the heavy stream of hot water in his hotel room. Tony showers quickly and then dresses in the clothes Pepper had procured for him out of thin air. They’re somehow warm, and that just makes him more tired than he already is.

Tony collapses on the bed even though he promised himself he wouldn’t. He falls asleep clutching his phone like a lifeline.

* * *

When he wakes up there are no missed calls, but that does nothing to ease the mounting terror in his chest when he sees he slept so long the sun went down.

Despite that, when he gets back to the hospital, Peter is still right where Tony left him.

Only he’s awake now.

It’s unexpected, the way Tony’s heart skips when he sees those eyes, wide with something like wonder instead of the fear from before. He blinks up at Tony innocently.

Catherine raises her eyebrows at him. “Damn. And they say beauty sleep is just for ladies.”

Tony doesn’t even register her comment. He stands next to Peter’s incubator and then leans over it, lightly tapping the glass.

(morse code: i love you; he doesn’t even realise those are the words he spells out)

Peter blinks again. Then he stretches one hand up and swipes at Tony.

Tony can’t remember the last time he smiled like this, or if he’s ever smiled this way at all. “Hi,” he whispers. “Did you miss me? I missed you.”

Peter swipes at him again, reaching uselessly. Tony perches on the chair and slips his hand inside, taking Peter’s tiny one in his own, running his thumb over Peter’s palm.

Peter makes a pleased sort of noise behind the oxygen mask. His grip is weak and barely there, but his tiny fingers still try to curl around Tony’s thumb and grab.

“Told you he’d be fine,” Catherine calls over her shoulder as she walks away.

Tony rolls his eyes. “She’s a meanie, huh?” He leans in conspiratorially. “Reminds me of my old nanny from sixth grade. She was always on my ass, trying to get me to eat healthy and get my homework done before TV.”

Peter turns his head to the sound of Tony’s voice and he wiggles a little, his other hand reaching and clutching at Tony’s thumb.

He thinks about the skinny eleven year old kid who’d shouted at Nanny Pauline that he didn’t _need_ to do his homework first, it would only take five minutes tops. He thinks about how his father had walked in and found him yelling at the nanny, and how he’d backhanded Tony so hard he’d almost cracked a tooth.

_Bad day at work,_ he’d mumbled in apology later, tossing an ice pack onto Tony’s bed, suspended in the doorway. _Don’t do that again and we won’t have any problems, yeah? Go to bed, Anthony._

Tony breathes away the memory. He can’t ever imagine doing something like that to Peter. He could be fucking _dying_ and he would _never_ …

Peter slips into sleep.

* * *

Pepper comes in the next morning carrying forms and folders. She presents the NDAs to the nurses for them to sign.

Tony’s aware he’s taking on a huge task, trying to keep his son a secret from the world, but he doesn’t want Peter to experience the same things he did. He doesn’t want him to have to worry about endangering his classmates by existing in the same place as them, or get ulcers over when the next bomb threat might arise. It’s not an easy life, being a Stark. Tony is determined to shield Peter from as much of it as possible.

“Okay,” Pepper whips around breezily and sits across from Tony. Peter is between them, staring at nothing in particular. They’d taken the oxygen mask off a few hours ago and replaced it with a cannula, since he seemed to be breathing a lot better than before.

“Okay, what?”

“What do you mean, ‘what’?” Pepper demands. “Mr Stark, there’s still so much left to do! You still haven’t bought clothes for Peter, or supplies—you don’t have a car seat, or a travel crib—”

“I bought clothes,” Tony argues.

“He’ll need smaller sizes,” Pepper says tiredly. “And I _saw_ what you bought. He’ll need a lot more than that.”

Tony pinches his brow. “Okay. Okay. Order what you think is best, have it shipped to the Malibu house. The rest—I’ll be here for a month, at least, we might as well rent out an apartment. Look for a place, and once we have that sorted out, we can have things shipped there too. Diapers, formula, and oh—those footie pajamas. Lots of those. They’re fucking cute.”

Pepper rolls her eyes. “You’re really gonna be _that_ dad, aren’t you?”

It’s the first time he’s ever heard himself being called a _dad._ It sends a jolt through him, something not quite panic, more like pleasure. “What?”

“You know, the kind that swears around their kids all the time and laughs when their first word is ‘shit’,” Pepper says. “You can’t raise him to have a potty mouth.”

Tony laughs. “Well, that’s what you’re here for. You’re the positive influence.”

Pepper sighs like he’s just placed the weight of the world on her shoulders. “I’ll look at apartments,” she grouses, and leaves.

Tony taps the glass to get Peter’s attention. “Don’t listen to her. I don’t mind if you swear around me. You’ll be the coolest kid in your class, huh? The girls are gonna go crazy around you. Or boys. Whatever, I don’t mind either way. God, I’m getting ahead of myself, huh?”

Peter’s face scrunches up.

“You just pooped, didn’t you?”

* * *

Diaper changing isn’t an easy task, because Peter always starts crying when he’s moved too much. Suze mentioned something about being careful not to angle his neck awkwardly or he might not get enough oxygen, so Tony tries to keep Peter’s head tilted back.

He’s not an expert. The first few times, the nurses had re-done Peter’s diapers because Tony had put them on backward or messed up the fastenings. At least, at this point, he’s gathered the basics.

Still, it’s hard to do with Peter crying. He makes small, desperate whines, sniffling and blinking in confusion, like he can’t quite comprehend why he’s being subjected to such torture.

“I’m sorry, Petey,” Tony says, hardly registering the nickname that rolls off his tongue so easily it’s scary. “I know it sucks, but it’s better than sitting in it, right?”

Peter just sobs, doe eyes trained on Tony pleadingly, like he’s begging for it to be over.

Tony feels sort of the opposite. Even though it’s gross, it’s the longest he really gets to interact with Peter.

He stays fussy even after Tony is done. The cannula had gotten twisted and so he fixes that, and straightens Peter’s hat, and _god,_ he’s fussing over him like a mother. Like _his_ mother.

At least he has one relatively positive influence to draw off of with all of this.

“Hey kid? Don’t tell anyone, but you’re fucking cute and I love you, okay?”

Peter starts to cry some more.

* * *

After the first week, things settle into a sort of routine. Tony spends the day with Peter, and then heads back to the apartment at night. It’s expensive but not too big, hidden away at the top of a skyscraper, only two miles from the hospital. It’s full of boxes and when Tony can’t sleep he goes through them, sorting clothes, washing them with Pepper’s direction, and assembling the travel crib.

It sits, empty, by his bed and waiting.

Peter doesn’t do much other than eat and sleep. Sometimes Tony will walk into the NICU to find him fussy and crying—his lungs are getting a little stronger every day, and as a consequence, his cries are getting louder—but Peter always quiets when Tony appears above him and taps the same code notes onto the glass.

When Peter is two weeks old, Tony gets to hold him for the second time ever.

It’s a quiet moment. Pepper is in the hallways fending off Obie again. He’s been urging Tony to fly back to Malibu as soon as possible. Tony had laughed when Pepper had first relayed the message and she hadn’t brought it up since, stewing in silent agreement.

It’s Suze who directs Tony over to the armchair where some of the mothers come to feed their kids. She lowers Peter into his arms, muttering about supporting his neck and remembering to keep his head elevated.

Tony nods and then shoos her away when she starts to hover.

For the first time, he’s really alone _with_ his son.

He tries to ignore the heaviness in his chest as Peter squirms in his blankets. “Hi, baby,” Tony whispers. “It’s me. It’s daddy. I’ve got you, okay? I love you.”

Peter’s arm breaks free. He reaches up and touches Tony’s jaw, tiny fingers scratching the stubble that’s grown. It’s the most amazing thing that Tony’s ever experienced, hands down.

* * *

“You ever heard of kangaroo care?”

It’s two in the morning and Suze who asks, because Peter just _won’t stop crying._ They’ve ruled out all of the usual causes; no dirty diaper, no need for a feeding, no fever.

“Heard of what?”

“He’s _lonely,_ sugar,” she says to him, around a thick as fuck Bronx accent. “He wants attention, he wants to be held.”

Despite the fact that Peter’s wailing signifies healthily developing lungs, it still sucks, because the other babies in the NICU are starting to cry now, too.

But Tony doesn’t care. Peter’s the only baby that matters.

“What’s kangaroo care?”

“Take off your shirt.”

“ _Excuse me?”_

Suze snorts. “Just trust, it’s not for me. Take it off, hotcakes.”

Bewildered but desperate to get Peter to stop, Tony does as she says. Suze nods and gently strips Peter of his onesie, leaving him bare-chested, like Tony.

“Here, put him against your chest—like that, yeah—see? Does wonders.”

Tony clutches Peter, pulling his legs up so he can sit Indian style in the leather recliner. Peter’s cries taper off into little whimpers and he curls up a little, tucking his head under Tony’s chin.

“But… how?”

Suze laughs. “He likes the warmth,” she says. “A lot of babies just need a little extra love. It’s hard lying in a box all day, you know?”

Tony can’t say he relates, but he nods, careful not to jostle Peter. His eyes are closed and his breathing has settled into something soft.

Suze smiles and slips into the back to do her charting.

Tony doesn’t know when he starts to hum, and he doesn’t quite recognise the song, but it soothes Peter into a light sleep.

Tony holds his tiny baby in his arms thinks he’d do anything; strip off his shirt, chop off his own hand, burn down everything he’s ever built—because it all pales in comparison to Peter.

“You’re a clingy little shit, you know that?” Tony presses his lips to Peter’s forehead without even thinking about it. “It’s okay, I don’t mind. I think I’m clingy, too.”

* * *

Peter is discharged from the hospital at five weeks old, a little while after they expected when he developed a low-grade fever and a tiny cough. His lungs make it through the cold without any problems, though, and despite Tony’s multitude of heart attacks, he comes out the other side.

They let him out when he passes the car seat test, and so Tony drives them back to the apartment with a pounding heart. He doesn’t go over the speed limit once.

Pepper is waiting for him in the living room. Tony takes off the sunglasses and hat he’d used to hide himself on the short journey from the car to the elevator and lowers Peter, still snuggled in his car seat and fast asleep, onto the kitchen counter.

“I hope you don’t mind eating baby for dinner, the Thai place was closed.”

Pepper jolts to her feet and rushes over. “Oh my god, _look,_ he’s _here,”_ she gushes, playing with Peter’s little hands. “Hi, Peter. Welcome home, sweetie.”

Tony can’t help smiling as he watches her, but it fades when he sees the sea of papers she’d been sitting in the middle of. It just reminds him that, as horrible as this past month has been, the prospect of returning to normality is infinitely worse; normal means meetings, it means being holed up in the workshop for hours on end. It means being away from Peter.

Pepper catches his gaze. “I still haven’t heard anything from Rhodey, before you ask,” she says. “I was just filling out some legal documents.”

Tony nods absently. He reaches for Peter and extracts him from the car seat, pulling him against his chest and wandering over to the papers.

“Obie?”

“Still calling,” she informs him. “I haven’t actually told him about Peter. He thinks you’re on some wellness retreat to get sober.”

Tony blinks. “Obie can be told.”

Obie _has_ to be told, right? And shouldn’t Tony want him to know?

Pepper is staring at him. She’s asking if he’s sure without _actually_ asking, because neither of them want to venture down that road.

“Maybe just… hold off for now,” Tony mutters after a minute. He holds Peter a little tighter. “What about this? What’s this?”

“A contract for a shareholder.” Pepper plucks the paper from his hands. “It’s undergoing revision. They want to change their timeline from two years to twelve.”

“That’s good, right? It means stocks are good? Future’s bright?”

“Yes, it’s very good, and… why are you asking? You never ask about the business side of things.”

It’s true. He’s just the mechanic. He builds weapons and gives them to Obie for distribution, and occasionally gives speeches or demonstrations for their clientele. That’s about it.

“I don’t know.” Tony lowers Peter so he’s in his lap. “I just figure I should know what’s going on in my own company, right?”

Pepper side-eyes him. “Your company is fine. Now shoo, you’re not allowed to learn about how my job works.”

“What?! Why not?”

“Because then I’ll be _obsolete,”_ she snaps. “Go away. Play with your baby.”

Tony scoffs. “Fine. Peter’s more fun than you are, anyway.”

Pepper calls out her offense as Tony marches away, but neither of them are really angry at all.

He retreats into the master suite and lays Peter down on top of the bed. “Hi,” Tony leans over him. “You like me, right? You’re not like your mean Aunt Pepper?”

Peter doesn’t answer. He puts his fist in his mouth and sucks on his fingers, which should be gross, but it’s way too cute.

Tony has no idea when he turned into a complete sap and it’s slightly terrifying. He’s not like, a complete dad now right? He won’t start walking around with one of those baby carriers and making baby-talk sounds at Peter?

“You’re really gonna cramp my style, huh, kid?”

Peter flops the hand he’s not currently _eating_ against his chest and kicks his legs. Tony feels a part of himself melt and he lowers himself so that he’s hovering just above Peter.

“Just you wait, Petey-Pie. You’re gonna meet your Uncle Rhodey, soon. He’s gonna _love_ you. But not as much as me, that’s impossible and also illegal. Hey, look, a teddy bear.”

There is, indeed, a teddy sitting on the bed. It must have been tossed there when he was scavenging for clothes earlier. It’s light blue and soft. He shows it to Peter, who doesn’t react at all until Tony shakes it. There’s some sort of rattle inside that gets Peter’s attention. He reaches out and grabs at it.

“We should name it,” Tony suggests. “I’m thinking Honeybear Jr., how about you?”

Peter puts its ear in his mouth and blinks up at him innocently.

“Oh, you love it? Yeah, I thought so.” 

When Pepper finds them hours later, wandering in to ask what kind of pizza Tony wants, Peter is fast asleep against his bare chest.

“I’m getting cheese,” Pepper proclaims, “because this might be the cheesiest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”

_Or the sweetest,_ she thinks, but doesn’t say.

Tony can’t be bothered to care.

_I’ve got you. I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d just like to repeat idk jack shit about medicine dont come at me pls ksjdkdjcjc


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

IV

* * *

  
At 3:14 AM, a shrill cry breaks through the tranquil of Tony’s New York apartment.

He jerks awake, covered in various places by contracts Pepper had been pestering him to sign for days. Tony had fallen asleep working on them only to be roused at such an ungodly hour by Peter’s bawling.

It’s been a week since he’d been brought home from the hospital, making him officially a month and a half old with the lung capacity to prove it.

Tony stumbles through the dark and leans over the portable crib Peter’s lying in. “Hey, puppy. What’s got your onesie in a knot, huh?”

Peter’s screams fade into dejected cries. He looks completely miserable as he stares up at Tony with teary eyes, grabbing at air with his hands.

Tony doesn’t waste any time picking Peter up. He does a quick sniff check, even though he already (somehow) knows this isn’t the problem; he’s been able to unconsciously distinguish between Peter’s cries more and more. These late night fits happen when he wakes up to find the world dark and seemingly empty. He cries, Tony thinks, because he’s scared and lonely.

Which is why Tony lays Peter down so he can strip off his shirt. He helps him settle against his chest, because Peter always calms down when Tony does this.

Well, almost always, but not tonight apparently.

Peter is still sobbing in the most downtrodden way, like he’s been severely neglected for the entirety of his very short life.

Tony’s heart twists. He hates it when Peter cries like this, like everything is bad and he’s all alone, like there’s nothing at all that could help.

“Sweetie,” Tony shifts so he can reach over to turn on the bedside lamp. Warm light floods the room. He hopes it helps. “Baby, hey, it’s okay. I’ve got you, okay?”

Peter hiccups and it’s completely adorable, but then he proceeds to bawl even more.

Tony kisses his forehead. “Petey, please stop? I’m right here, I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

He wishes he could just fall asleep with Peter curled up against him, but there’s a part of him that’s terrified of crushing his son in the night. Instead, Tony slips out of bed and starts pacing the apartment, free to roam because Pepper is back in Malibu for the weekend. He talks nonsense to Peter the whole time, regaling him with MIT horror stories that he won’t remotely understand.

Tony finally hits peak desperation after an hour. Peter’s cries have become tired and ragged, but he’s still not letting up.

So Tony starts to sing.

It’s an old Italian lullaby, one his mom would hum to him back in the earliest days of his life, when the world was still tinged with gold and she remembered to do the little things, like tuck him in at night and press a kiss to his forehead to ward off the bad dreams. “ _Se lo dò alla Befana, se_ _lo tiene una settimana...”_

He’s amazed he even remembers the words. They seem to pour out of him like they’d been waiting, and for whatever reason, they work.

Peter finally retires to little whimpering sounds. He looks up at Tony, all doleful brown eyes, and hiccups again.

“See? Not so bad, bambino. Everything’s okay, baby, I promise.”

Peter closes his eyes.

* * *

It happens again the next night, only this time Pepper is back, so he’s forced to keep Peter within the confines of his bedroom and find a way to soothe him before he wakes up the very irritable PA who is _so_ not a morning person.

Tony bounces him, shushes him, rubs his back and does the whole kangaroo thing, but it’s not until he starts singing again that it all stops.

“You really like that, huh?”

Peter, predictably, doesn’t reply.

* * *

Tony wakes up the next morning to the scent of coffee permeating the air, coupled with quiet murmured words that slip through the thin walls, muffled and strangely comforting. Pepper must be on the phone.

Tony doesn’t have a mind to bother her, and even if he did, he doesn’t get the chance.

Like Peter has some sort of mental alarm, he starts crying the minute Tony opens his eyes.

“Okay, you’re part clairvoyant, or something,” Tony grumbles, rolling out of bed. He scoops up Peter and starts to bounce him, a reflex at this point. He carries him over to the makeshift changing table and quickly goes about cleaning Peter up. He changes his diaper and slips him into a pair of footie pajamas, because it’s September and getting cold… and they’re fucking adorable.

But whatever.

They have the little paws so Peter can’t scratch at himself, but he still tries to grab for Tony anyway, swatting at his chin and cheeks.

“Hey Petey-Pie, there’s this super wild concept I don’t know if you’ve heard of, yet? It’s called: not crying. Wanna try it?”

Peter keeps crying.

“Yeah, I don’t know why I thought that would work.” He absently kisses Peter’s hand as he fastens the last of the buttons on his clothes. “You never listen to me. You’re already a defiant little… god, you know what’s pathetic? I can’t even bring myself to call you a little shit. You’re a defiant little poop nugget. That’s what you are. And you’re _loud,_ oh my god, I’m _begging_ you, baby, _stop.”_

Peter doesn’t stop.

Tony gathers him up and takes him over to the bed. He rattles Peter’s bear in front of him. “Look, bambi, it’s Honeybear Jr.! See? He loves you!”

Peter doesn’t do his usual interest coo. He just looks away, toward the windows, and keeps wailing like Honeybear Jr is so fucking ugly he’s going to be permanently scarred if he has to endure the sight of the little blue bear for another second.

“Okay, you know what? It’s feeding time, let’s get you a bottle.”

Tony tosses the bear over his shoulder and walks straight to the door.

Rhodey is standing behind it.

Tony almost drops Peter, he’s so surprised. He thinks he almost starts crying, too, and it’s only the realisation that his idiot friend was listening in that drives Tony into a more annoyed territory.

“Of course. _Of course._ Just show up _after_ the shitstorm, when no one is nearing an imminent death.”

Rhodey is grinning like an idiot. “That’s my nephew.”

“No, it’s the neighbor’s baby, I thought I might add ‘sitter’ to my resume— _yes,_ it’s your nephew. Your loud, annoying—no, I take it back, you’re not annoying kiddo, I promise—”

“Gimmie.”

“ _Excuse me?”_

“Gimmie the baby,” Rhodey says. He makes grabby hands. “I’ve been waiting to meet this little gremlin for six weeks, man. Hand him over.”

Tony would normally feel hesitant, but this is _Rhodey,_ and also, his eardrums are about to burst from the screaming. “Here, enjoy.”

And of course, Rhodey does, because Peter shuts up the _second_ he’s placed into his uncle’s arms.

“Oh, rude.”

Rhodey laughs. “I think he’s sick of you. I would be too, honestly. You _stink.”_

Tony doesn’t even register the comment. His chest feels like it’s caving in, his heartstrings are straining, because he already misses his baby and sort of resents that Peter clearly favours Rhodey over him.

“Man, are you actually jealous?”

“What? Hm? No. Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous, I detest him, he’s the antichirst,” Tony sucks in a painful breath, “I need coffee.”

Rhodey grins again. He looks down at Peter—really looks at him, and his smile turns a lot softer. “Damn. He’s…”

_“_ The most adorable fucking baby you’ve ever seen in your entire life? Yeah, that’s right. I made that.”

Peter puts a hand against Rhodey’s cheek, and Tony thinks he can actually _see_ his best friend melt a little. “Oh, wow.”

“Yeah, I know,” Tony says. “He’s the superior baby.”

Rhodey snorts. “Hey, Pete,” he says. “It’s me, your Uncle Rhodey. I bought you a _ton_ of presents, because spoiling you is my job. They’re all waiting for you back home, okay?”

Tony smiles to himself as he pours himself a cup of coffee. The kitchen is empty, so he assumes Pepper must have rushed out for some meeting or the other. It means he has free reign to fix Peter a bottle while Rhodey bounces Tony’s son and tells corny jokes.

“Alright, give.”

“What? No, no fair. You’ve had _weeks_ with him—”

“Rhodey,” Tony laughs, “I have to feed him. Give me my son.”

Rhodey blinks. He shakes his head in wonderment. “Your son,” he mutters. “Man, that sounds whack.”

“The baby.”

“ _Fine.”_

Peter ends up nestled in Tony’s arms again and thankfully doesn’t start crying. Tony settles on the couch by the glass wall of windows and offers the bottle to Peter. It’s too fucking cute, the way his eyes always go wide at the taste of warm pediasure, tiny hands reaching up to grab pointlessly at the bottle, suckling and blinking and kicking his legs.

“Oh my god. You’re in love with your baby.”

Tony looks up. Rhodey still has that marvelling expression on his face, like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing.

“What?”

“You’re _smitten,”_ Rhodey proclaims.

“Can you blame me?” Tony demands. “Look at this little poop nugget. Do you see this? Who the fuck _isn’t_ in love with my baby?”

It’s lame that he can’t even bring himself to deny it. A part of him wonders why he would. It seems like a behavioural instinct from another life and he gets deja vu contemplating the idea of pretending to be anything other than adoring of his own son.

“You’re gonna have to watch your mouth around the kid,” Rhodey says, because he’s not _Rhodey_ if he doesn’t get in at least one good lecture before the sun goes down.

“Fuck you,” Tony counters. His gaze turns back to Peter, who’s still happily sucking away. “Petey and I already have an agreement about swearing.”

Rhodey raises his eyebrows. He reclines in the seat opposite Tony, watching them in silence for a minute. It’s Tony who breaks it.

“Where have you been?”

“Iraq,” Rhodey says vaguely.

“Can you tell me about it?”

“Not really. It’s very—”

“Top secret, hush hush.” Tony rolls his eyes. “You’re okay though, right?”

“Holy shit, you _have_ gone soft,” Rhodey says. “I didn’t believe Pepper when she told me, but damn. You? Asking after my well-being—?!”

“Alright, alright, shut up.” Tony scowls. “I haven’t always been a _complete_ asshole, you know. And you still haven’t answered my question.”

“I know,” Rhodey sighs. “And… I’m fine. Really.”

Tony doesn’t exactly believe him, but he nods. “Well, good. That means you’re on burping duty.”

* * *

Tony still has a habit of counting the seconds between Peter’s every inhale and exhale as he falls asleep.

He’s staring at him now as Rhodey rambles on about something or the other—they’re sprawled out on Tony’s bed, surrounded by papers and books and car magazines; Tony isn’t paying attention to a word that’s coming out of Rhodey’s mouth and hasn’t been for the last ten minutes.

That is, until Rhodey snaps his fingers under Tony’s nose.

“Huh? What?”

Rhodey shakes his head. “I would be mad, but I get it,” he says, eyes drifting to where Peter lays in his crib. “I’m gonna be honest, this isn’t the way I was expecting to find you.”

“No? What were you expecting? An abandoned baby and me, holed up in a bar someplace?”

It’s more biting than he intends, but Rhodey doesn’t wince. Instead he shrugs. “Pretty much, honestly. Can you blame me?”

Tony looks over at Peter. “I thought about it. Just for a split second during that first night. Does that… does that make me a horrible father?”

“No, man, of course not.” Rhodey nudges him. “You stayed. You’re here. You fuss over him more than _my_ mother fussed over us, and that’s saying something. It doesn’t matter what you thought, as long as you didn’t go through with it, okay?”

Tony nods. Something inside of him settles a little, but not all the way, because it terrifies him to think about where he would be—and where Peter would be—if he really had left, if he’d succumbed to the urge to flee and then gotten wasted, abandoned his kid.

Tony is picking Peter up and carrying him over without even thinking. Peter’s eyes flutter open but he doesn’t cry, just gazes up with something like mild confusion.

Tony settles back on the bed and idly strokes Peter’s belly. He doesn’t like thinking about that. He doesn’t _ever_ want to imagine Peter without him, or him without Peter. It doesn’t fit anymore. The person he was before is so far gone from his memory, hidden behind all these new feelings, new priorities.

“I don’t want to go back home yet.”

“It won’t be as scary as you’re thinking,” Rhodey murmurs. “Besides, I finished Peter’s crib.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Rhodey shrugs. “I didn’t want you coming back with no place to put him, and I needed someplace to throw all those stuffed animals I bought him anyway.”

Tony laughs. The front door opens and closes then, signalling Pepper’s return. She pulls off her heels as she approaches his bedroom door. “Well, look at that.”

“He said yes,” Tony announces. “We’re going to get married and move into a cottage in the Alps.”

Pepper laughs at the same time that Rhodey scoffs. She has a soft sort of look on her face, leaning against the doorframe, clutching her heels in a lazy grip. Tony thinks she’s beautiful, but he doesn’t say it; because it’s over the line and to her, by now, after hearing him utter the same words to countless other women it must be meaningless.

So he says, “There’s leftover Chinese in the fridge.”

And Pepper smiles. “That’s okay, I already ate.”

Then she’s gone, retreating into her bedroom to do whatever. That’s when he catches Rhodey staring—or rather, remembers that Rhodey is even there at all.

“Shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You had a look.”

“ _You_ had a look.”

Tony rolls his eyes.

* * *

Tony dreams about his father. He sees shaking hands clutching a crystal cut glass of scotch, knuckles painted crimson. He sees gold, the glint of the buckle on his father’s suspenders as he paces up and down his office, clutching a phone, searching, _searching,_ for the one thing he couldn’t have; ignoring, _abandoning_ everything else.

Tony wakes up with a jerk.

For once, it’s silent.

Not perfectly so; outside the city still breathes and bustles. Even from this height he can hear the honking of car horns, can see the lights from below reflected in the glass windows of the building across from them.

But the apartment is still. The air hangs, suspended, and he waits with bated breath for cries that never come.

For a minute there’s a fear, something that burrows deep and after that split second never really leaves him; that Peter is just gone somehow, that Tony will end up pacing away carpets, searching, _searching,_ forever and never finding.

But then his eyes land on Peter’s form. He’s back in his bed. Pepper must have come in after Tony and Rhodey fell asleep.

Rhodey is still beside him, his legs hanging off the edge of the mattress. Tony moves slowly so as not to startle him out of sleep and wanders over to the crib.

For a minute he just watches. He follows every breath and relishes in it, watches Peter’s eyelashes flutter and thinks there must be a thousand wishes’ worth. Then he reaches down, laying his hand flat against Peter’s tummy.

He just wants to hold him, and doesn’t really mind if it wakes Peter up. It would be nice to have company while his heart settles back down, exhausted after its fight with darkness, after warding off the evil in Tony’s veins.

Peter doesn’t really rouse, though, when Tony scoops him up and lets him fall against his shoulder. He just makes a little whining sound before settling again.

Tony wanders into the living room.

Hundreds of lights against the black sky, a skyline that winks and gleams, clouds that glow with the light of a moon they can’t see. It stretches out in an almost lazy sprawl, like it’s not the result of years of work, like someone just thought it up in a single afternoon.

Tony glances down at Peter and wonders how many afternoons it will be, how much work. He wonders if Peter will have memories like his; snapshots of bloody knuckles and doors slammed in his face.

He can’t ever imagine treating his kid that way, and for some reason it all just hurts so much more now. It hurts to realise his father was ten times shittier than he’d thought before. It hurts to feel this love; all-encompassing, unconditional, raging like a wildfire inside of him, and know his own father didn’t feel the same about him.

Peter squirms a little in his arms. He’s awake, now, but bleary and rosy-cheeked, flush with warmth.

“Hey, puppy,” Tony whispers. “I’m sorry. I just missed you.”

It’s not something he thinks about when he nudges Peter’s nose with his own and then kisses him on the forehead. It’s just something he does to make the bad dreams stay away.

Hopefully, Peter will never have any about him.


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

V

* * *

  
“He’s a little on the low side.”

Tony looks up. “What does that mean?”

Dr. Magondu shakes her head with a fond smile. After a month as Peter’s primary paediatrician, she’s gotten used to Tony’s incessant fussing. 

“It means he’s a smaller baby, which isn’t uncommon in children who were born premature. He’s just catching up, so don’t fret over percentiles. Those are based on full term averages. Peter is _just fine,”_ she assures him. “He’s healthy, really.”

As if to prove this point, Peter raises his head from where he’s resting on his tummy, hands pressed against the wax-like paper that covers the check up bench. He gurgles and reaches for Tony with one hand, only to promptly lose his balance and fall. 

This, of course, causes him to cry.

Tony doesn’t waste any time scooping him up and shushing him. These days Peter responds easier, calming quicker than those first few weeks. He grabs at Tony’s face. 

Dr. Magondu is pretending not to watch them as she charts. “He’s going to start teething soon,” she tells him, and reaches into the cabinet. She pulls out two plastic rings filled with water. “Let him chew on these for the pain. They’re more effective when frozen; the cold numbs the gums.”

Tony nods and takes them gratefully. “Thanks.”

“Yes, I know, you love me and your baby does too. Now go, be other places, I have five more children to see before my break.”

* * *

Tony carries Peter out to the car. As soon he’s under the unforgiving rays of the hot Malibu sun, Peter starts to whine. 

Tony does his best to shush him as he tucks him into his car seat. It’s mid day and there’s no one around, so he takes his time, rubbing Peter’s tummy and sitting there trying to calm him down.

Peter doesn’t let up, just keeps bawling, face flushed with red and tears streaming freely down his cheeks. 

“Baby,” Tony tries, for maybe the hundredth time, “it’s gonna be okay, I promise.”

Peter doesn’t understand what he’s saying because he’s just too small, but every time Tony speaks the crying stops a little like he wants to listen. Tony leans down and presses a kiss to the top of Peter’s head. “I’m here,” he whispers. “I’ve got you.”

* * *

He rewards Peter’s endurance of the physician’s check up with a bath.

Peter loves baths. He sits in a pool of shallow water while Tony watches like a hawk, petrified of turning his back for even a few seconds. Peter just smacks the surface of the water and splashes, and Tony never minds when it gets on his clothes. 

He holds a rubber duck up to Tony’s face and starts babbling. Tony had always found the sound to be annoying; sitting in waiting rooms or movie theatres listening to babies ramble on aimlessly was beyond grating, but now, with Peter, he can’t bring himself to consider it anything but adorable.

“Yes, ducky,” Tony agrees. 

Peter giggles. He pops the head of the duck in his mouth and then pulls it back out, chucking it into the water and pointing when it floats back up to the surface. 

“Cool huh? You wanna know why it does that?”

Peter makes grabby hands for his duck, so Tony hands it back and starts rambling about buoyancy and Archimedes’ principle on rubber and yeah, he’s giving a physics lesson to a baby. 

“Wouldn’t it be so funny if you just absorbed all the wacky shit I tell you?” Tony asks, and receives no reply. “You’re gonna be smarter than me, I bet.”

Peter squeezes his duck and shrieks when it squeaks.

He then pops its head in his mouth again. 

“That’s the Stark Method,” Tony nods approvingly. “Bite people’s heads off so no matter what, you got the biggest brain in the room.”

He washes Peter’s hair, and Peter stays silent, suckling contentedly on his duck head and occasionally looking up at Tony with wide eyes, like he forgets where he is every few minutes and then remembers. 

Tony takes Peter out of the bath and wraps him up in a towel with teddy bear ears. Peter blinks owlishly at him, and Tony kisses his cheek more than once because he’s one-hundred percent sure he has the cutest damn kid in the whole world.

Only, as Tony carries him back to the bedroom, Peter starts to cry.

Like, loud, wailing, ‘the world is ending’ type sobs. 

“Hey, what is it, baby?”

Peter squeezes his eyes shut like he can’t even tolerate _seeing_ things anymore, everything is just awful and being a baby is just _so hard._

Tony slowly lays him down on the bed and gets to work dressing him, mindless of the cries. Clothes come first after baths, because he doesn’t need Peter shivering and cold; comfort can wait a minute. 

Peter kicks his legs in his footie pajamas and flails away, continuously knocking off his outfit. “Yes, yes, I know,” Tony agrees. “Everything is awful, the apocalypse is upon us, we’re all going to die.”

Peter cries harder, which Tony didn’t think was even possible.

“Wow, okay, how about we just—” Tony picks Peter up, “how about we walk around a bit, huh?”

It doesn’t help. Tony paces his house three whole times to try and get Peter to quiet down. Even singing doesn’t help.

All at once a flash of white has Tony halting in his tracks.

It’s something he hadn’t really noticed before. It’s just barely poking through, but it’s enough for Tony to finally understand. 

“You’re teething,” he says. “Well why didn’t you just _tell me?”_

He carries Peter over to the freezer and fishes out the gummy rings Dr. Magondu had given him. Tony runs it under the faucet first before offering it to Peter, who pointedly turns his head away.

“No? We hate it?” Peter hiccups and sobs. “Yes, of course we do. Look at it, it’s awful.” He throws it over his shoulder. “The audacity of her to give us a chew toy _lime green.”_

Tony stares at Peter blankly for a moment. “So what’s next, bambi?”

Peter looks back at him and his eyes are almost _pleading,_ like he’s in absolute mortal agony and he just wants it to _stop._ Tony’s heart cracks and caves. 

“Baby, I’m so sorry,” he whispers, bouncing Peter a little. “I know it hurts, I know it sucks. Here, how about we just—”

Peter finally shuts up.

Like, instantly.

The second Tony offers up his finger, it’s immediately being suckled and gummed by his wide eyed baby, because _obviously_ this was what he wanted all along. 

Peter holds Tony’s finger with one hand and grips his shirt with the other. Tony closes his eyes, letting a wave of short, blissful relief overtake him. 

“And they say _I’m_ a drama queen.”

Peter blinks. 

Tony carries him over to the couch and plops down, reclining against the plush leather. His eyelids are heavy and with his brain no longer pulsing against the walls of his skull, sleep seems like it might actually be within reach. 

“You’re very loud,” Tony observes. “A _very_ loud baby.”

Peter makes a little noise, like maybe he’s grunting in agreement around Tony’s finger. 

“You know, when I said Stark men practise cannibalism, I didn’t mean on _each other.”_

Peter’s eyes start to droop.

“There it is. My one and only audience member falls asleep in the middle of my set. Why am I not surprised?”

Just like that, he’s out like a light. 

Tony just gazes at him for a moment, because lately quiet moments like this one have been rare. Peter had been a mild baby to start with, but has he’s gotten older, he’s grown increasingly temperamental. 

He’s still cute as shit though, even more so when he’s sucking lightly on Tony’s finger in his sleep, eyelashes fluttering against his pink cheeks. 

“I keep forgetting how much I love you,” Tony whispers, “and then it just hits me all over again, all at once.”

Peter stays fast asleep, even when Tony presses a kiss to his nose. 

* * *

By November, Peter’s top front teeth have completely come in. Tony is pretty well-versed in dealing with the pain of teething by now; instead of sacrificing his fingers every time, he offers Peter cold baby cloths soaked in water or milk, and sometimes even Ducky the Rubber Duck. 

It’s raining outside, which is pretty rare for Malibu even during this time of year. Tony is kneeling on the ground with Peter lying below him, giggling when Tony tickles his sides. 

Pepper sighs exasperatedly from the kitchen table. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Listening? Of course.” Tony picks Peter up and holds him, trying to get him to grow used to standing a little. “Contract renewals.”

“Contract renewals,” Pepper echoes with affirmation. “Are you— _Mr Stark, please.”_

Tony looks up. Peter immediately makes his protest known, grabbing onto the sides of his face. He’s an attention hog if Tony ever saw one. 

“I’m _listening,”_ Tony says. “Just… go over it one more time?”

Pepper looks like she would rather stick needles in her eyes, but he’s her boss and she has no choice but to listen; so she re-reads the document in a dead, monotonous voice. 

“Very thrilling,” Tony says. “But might I suggest an action sequence there in the middle? It gets a tad dull around paragraph four—”

“ _Mr Stark.”_

“I’m kidding.” Just to prove it he rises to his feet, tucking Peter against his hip, and signs the document. “There, approved. What else?”

They spend another hour going over expense reports for the past quarter. It’s not really something he needs to worry about, given he has Pepper—who has a BA in accounting and can sniff out fraudulence in a heartbeat. 

When they finish, as Pepper starts to pack up all of her things, Tony stops her. “Stay for dinner.”

“What?”

“C’mon—look, it’s raining, it’s cold—”

“It’s _Thanksgiving.”_

“Is it?” He’d known that. He also knows that she doesn’t have anything going on; her mother and brother are all the way back east, and the idea of her going home to an empty (albeit expensive) apartment is unacceptable to him. “All the more reason to stay.”

Pepper raises her eyebrows. “Are you cooking?”

“Pasta.”

“On _Thanksgiving?”_

“Oh please,” Tony waves her off. “We all know it’s a bullshit Hallmark holiday. Besides, Rhodey’s coming over too, and he’s bringing all the good stuff.”

“You want to eat a traditional Thanksgiving dinner… with pasta?” 

Tony grins. “Of course.” 

His mother had always done it. Their family friends had assumed it was just one of her strange Italian quirks, but these days, Tony’s beginning to think it was more of a snub against his dad and the whole American feast. 

Pepper sighs. “Mr Stark—”

“Tony, tonight,” he requests. “Please.”

She’s still hesitant, and so he holds Peter in her face. “It’s not Thanksgiving without Aunty Pepper, huh, Petey?”

That’s all it takes to win her over. 

Rhodey and Happy arrive about half an hour later, after Pepper has already busied herself setting up the dining room table with cloth and cutlery Tony didn’t even know he had. 

He thinks the silver might be his mom’s, but it’s been so long, he’s not sure anymore. 

“I brought pie,” Happy announces. It’s store bought and pecan, both things Tony hates, but he doesn’t say anything other than _thank you._

Maybe tomorrow though, he might tear Happy a new one for being lazy and having the worst taste in pies like, _ever._

Peter gurgles from his pack & play. He’s in the middle of the kitchen and they’re all moving around him. Tony glances up from the sauce he’s simmering with a smirk, attention captured by Peter’s needy screech. 

“I see you, kiddo.”

“Yeah, okay,” Rhodey grins, “there’s no _way_ that kid isn’t yours.”

Peter lets out a shrill cry in agreement. 

Pepper goes over and soothes him. Rhodey orders JARVIS to play old blues songs. He hums along to them, chopping up celery and carrots, a washcloth thrown over his shoulder. 

It’s domestic, which is a word Tony never thought he would use to describe his cold, modern bachelor pad of a mansion. 

But the music fills up the gaping silence, and Happy and Pepper’s dull conversation washes away the emptiness. He feels, for the first time, almost at home. 

* * *

At two in the morning, Tony is woken up by a piercing cry. 

He sits up with a jerk, almost toppling off of the chair he’d fallen asleep in. Around him, there are parts scattered—nuts, bolts, screws, soldering tools—and in his scramble to get up he knocks a few onto the floor.

The sound emanates from the baby monitor, interspersed by static, muffled with Tony’s palpitating heart. 

He takes the stairs two at a time and rushes up to Peter’s room. Inside it’s dark; the curtains are parted just enough to let in a little moonlight though, and Tony sees that Peter is sitting up on his own, bawling his eyes out. 

“Hey, sweetie, what’s up?”

Peter hardly stops for a breath, even as Tony strides over and picks him up out of the crib. He’s been sleeping on his own for the past three weeks and it hasn’t been an easy transition for either of them, so Tony’s first assumption is that he must be lonely.

But then his hands make contact with Peter’s skin and he’s _burning up._

“Oh, shit,” Tony breathes, repositioning Peter so he can hold him with one arm, because his diaper is soaked through too and his sheets are damp. “Oh, baby, it’s okay.”

Peter just keeps crying, like before when he was teething—only this time it’s worse, and Tony hadn’t even thought that was possible. He’d really thought they’d hit peak Peter Misery, but here they are, shrouded in shadow on a freezing December night and Peter is _way too fucking hot._

“Okay, okay…” Tony carries him over to the changing table and quickly fixes the whole diaper mess. He’ll deal with the sheets later, he thinks, pressing his hand to Peter’s forehead. 

He doesn’t have a thermometer, so he asks JARVIS for a reading. 

“Young Peter’s temperature seems to be at one-hundred and three and climbing,” JARVIS reports, oblivious to the way Tony’s stomach plummets. “I would recommend taking him to the doctor.”

A doctor. _Right._ A doctor. Tony takes a deep breath and feels selfish just for doing that, for spending a second on himself instead of Peter. 

“Alright, okay, here we go,” he says, and grabs a blanket. They hurry down to the garage. 

* * *

“Back so soon?”

Dr. Magondu looks severely unimpressed when Tony shows up in the middle of her wing at such an ungodly hour. He’d called in to make sure she was there and asked the nurse to inform her that he was on his way with a very feverish baby, and then hung up before she could even ask for his name.

The nurse doesn’t need to ask now. She’s staring, wide eyed, open mouthed and unabashed. 

Peter whimpers. That’s what he’s been doing for the past ten minutes, just whimpering and moaning, like he’s too worn out to even cry anymore. 

That scares Tony.

“Please, can you just—?”

“Yes, yes, hand over your child.”

Tony does, somewhat reluctantly despite the fact that Dr. Magondu _needs_ to examine Peter to help him. She shushes him and sighs sympathetically. “Poor thing,” she tuts, carrying him into the examination room.

The examination starts smoothly. Dr. Magondu takes Peter’s temperature, measures his heart rate, and then frowns when she gets to his ears. “Just as I suspected,” she says, nodding to herself.

“What? What is it?”

She sends him a look. “Relax, it’s nothing terminal, just an ear infection.”

“ _What?”_

She looks like she’s fighting back a smile. “Like I said, nothing terminal. I’ll prescribe some antibiotics to help clear it up. Your biggest problem right now is his chest, though.”

“W-What’s wrong with his chest?!”

There’s a part of him that’s aware he’s freaking out despite the fact that she’s perfectly calm, demeanour even if maybe a little amused, and Peter isn’t even crying anymore; he’s just blinking all sad and tired, looking like he might flop over any second. 

He’s aware, but all he can think is that first month; Peter tiny and weak and lying in that fucking plastic box, chest rising and falling with a rattle because every breath was a struggle. 

“He’s going to get a cough soon. There’s a risk of him developing pneumonia, so I need you to keep a close eye on him. Maybe sure he’s taking his medications, apply damp washcloths to his forehead, all of that.”

“I…”

“Relax, Tony. It’s just a cold, but with his medical history it’s important you let me know if things get worse.”

_Worse?_ “Okay… what qualifies as worse?”

“Coughing up blood, excessive vomiting, choking on his mucus—make sure to keep him elevated as he sleeps, by the way.”

_Coughing up blood._

“Right,” Tony breathes. “Right, okay.”

Dr. Magondu sighs. “You need to _breathe,_ Tony.”

“I’m breathing,” Tony says, _but what if Peter stops?_

Dr. Magondu removes her gloves and levels him with a look. “This is something every baby goes through at some point or the other,” she says. “Peter is going to be okay. You can pick up the meds downstairs and take him home, alright?”

“But—”

She shoos him. “Go, be on your way, I have much charting to do. And remember, don’t wrap Christmas up in anxiety, hmm?”

* * *

Peter hates his meds. His face screws up when Tony feeds them to him, and he knows from here on out it’s going to be a struggle to get him to open his mouth for anything on a spoon. 

Great. His kid is only five months old and already has trust issues. 

Tony sighs and runs his hand over the small tuft of brown hair on Peter’s head. He presses his lips to Peter’s warm forehead. “You got me all strung up, you know that?”

Peter makes a small, sleepy babbling sound, almost like he’s sorry. 

“That’s okay, bambino,” Tony whispers. He cradles Peter against his chest. It’s late—maybe four in the morning, now, and Peter is blinking like he’s trying to keep his eyes open.

Tony hums a lullaby, rocking Peter lightly to try and shift him into sleep. 

If someone had told him a year ago that he would be here, standing in the middle of his living room, swathed in the multicoloured glow of the lights from the excessive and far-too-opulent looking Christmas tree by the windows, holding his son in his arms? He would have laughed. 

A year ago he was flirting with Mary Parker, drunk out of his mind, probably high to boot. He was a mess, trying to drown out the voices in his head that screamed things like _you’re not good enough_ and _you’ll never live up to your name._

He’d never created anything that satisfied him, never built or imagined anything that satiated the craving for _more,_ the edge that kept pushing him and pushing him because _one day,_ he would have that breakthrough; he _had_ to. 

Except that breakthrough is in his arms, existing completely by accident, cheeks tinged with pink from his fever. 

Tony will never create anything as beautiful, as perfect, as Peter. 

“Merry Christmas, baby,” he whispers, and gives Peter a kiss goodnight.

Outside, it starts to snow. 

**Author's Note:**

> follow my tumblr (@peter-stank) & tell me what u thought!!!


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